Poetry | Summer 2022

by Alex Light

Something sinister is growing inside me,

And I can’t stop smiling.

For three days I’ve eaten nothing but tobacco and gasoline

I sit on my porch at the edge of my city 

To watch a wildfire approaching,

Still smiling.

It’s a dark glow I’m enjoying–

A promise of approaching novelty

Breeds a monstrous pregnancy

And I can’t help but smile.

Tension, elation, expanding in my stomach

Together hit an animal’s pitch, 

I walk into town about it, smiling.

Not alone in revelment,

Many men are sharing this bedevilment,

A pleased violet light from all our eyes

That I know might turn violent

Fumes in the body are barely maintained

My head’s high as the treetops, swaying

Before I’m stopped by shouts of delaying:

‘Halt, halt! 

Gasoline consumption, by emergency law must halt.

I’ll have to detain you by default…’

I open my mouth to greet the cop

A belch, my mistaken assault

He walks into the cloud only to fall

Unconscious by no one’s fault. 

My dark glow’s growing inside

Deeper through the city on lifted senses, 

The ‘proaching fires a new oceanside.

Waiting to approach a man of the Senate, 

Are men with bowed heads in a line

Gasoline his alluring scent, 

Draws me to stand at his side

Without even looking, he smiles,

Spreads his arm wide,

Declaims:

‘Here they approach! All of Toriat’s lower citizens,

With tributes to end conflagration.’

Holding an ivory staff of entwined serpents

He knights the man at the line’s front, 

Takes his tribute, bids him exeunt,

‘This staff is the Caduceus!

We suspect some guilt in the populace,

An arson’s act of malevolence.

If red shines from the eyes of the serpents,

I will strike the man from existence.’

Smears of red paint have covered the serpents’ eyes.

My grin is twitching unpleasant

In the clarity of this lie.

My belly shifts again,

Another bubble of gasoline

The Senator’s robes and manner are so pristine

I try to hold it in, listen, be polite.

I feel my eyes burn violet,

I can’t hold in a grin.

He’s thus encouraged:

‘If the serpents’ eyes glow red, 

I must strike the evildoer dead!

So I swing Hermes’ Staff upon his head.’

He demonstrates,

Takes tribute what would a whole family have fed,

With their heads and bodies bowed, 

No one in line notice’d.

He turns an eager smile to me

And I start to nod agreeably,

But the body’s reached a limit, 

Exploding with fantastic flatulence,

And the Senator’s struck dead–

Also the next three supplicants–

None of the waiting men move, no one notices.

There the Staff of Hermes lies unattended,

So scraping the paint from its serpents’ eyes

I turn to the city’s tallest hill, whence comes more fuel-scent.

One blue oak stands at the foot of the hill

 Which is absent of architecture,

  First step of my left foot and

   My senses press together–

    Roiling indigestion and

     Gasping hunger and

      Breathless expectation and

       The collapse of nearer and farther,

        A breeze ruffling the blue oak’s leaves is

         My striding feet is

          An itch in my left wrist 

           Is all the air between is

            Fingers ‘round Caduceus cloist

             My insides are poised

              At a standstill of choice

               Closer and closer now,

                to the center of this noise.

Toriat’s youngest men make a line up the height.

One king and his court stand at the crown of the hill

A pyramid of devoured boys’ heads at the throne’s left side,

Their blood from the king’s mouth taking his fill, 

Each life swallowed leaves him gaspingly thin, still.

Seeing clearly such distortion

Creates in me an equal reaction,

And lacking subjective distance,

I become the vessel of Judgement.

Hermes’ Staff swings for the king’s head,

His feast is ended,

The king is dead,

But no one notices.

The Staff glows now blinding and fierce

With the court’s sight a moment pierced

I belch choking clouds of gasoline, 

Now all the court’s senses erring,

I ascend a throne left empty, and no one notices.

The bowed form of the next boy approaches.

Now that I’m king, 

I beckon the closest of my attendants,

Smiling, 

Ask for his ear a moment in confidence

Hermes Staff shines scarlet blinding 

That I may work as lightning

The corrupt courtier’s head joins the gory pyramid,

And the slave boy is dressed in court livery instead,

Is the city’s rot being mended?

No one yet notices. 

I look for the next closest attendant, 

But the body’s breathlessness has found its moment:

A bubble of gaseous fuel bursts within

My swollen senses fall into devourment.

I’ve become the ravenous demon, 

A monstrous body reaches for the closest courtier,

Then another, and another, 

Devouring is the endless hunger,

And he’s grown fat to the size of six men,

Collapsing the bone structure of me, a man,

Broken and overcome with satiation

His escaping fluids

Are acids hollowing out the hill

The hill’s gone but after hours still,

The fluids eat their way within

Centuries later, 

An abyss lives there in the center

Of a city grown proof against the fire

Every citizen’s life is built in ritual pattern,

As the city is built around this abyss:

The Open Eye, an old bard whispers

Goes down to the earth’s center,

Where Hermes’ Staff 

Lay watching us forever,

The ritual, presented altogether:

Every man must give the Eye a sacred offer.

And this he dreads,

If it’s not of Truth and Holy Breath,

If it holds the worshipping of death, 

Up from the Eye will rise the Staff’s glow of red,

A terrible judgement made objective, 

A fall within the man

Creates a fall into the abyss,

And the man himself is cast in.

Thus does the city’s corruption 

Make its own end.